


Walls

by Roshwen



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, No real plot whatsoever, Random musing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A random musing about what the walls of 221b see and what they (don't) say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls

 

Walls can listen, but they can not talk. Therefore, everything they see or hear remains a secret between them and their resident.

Walls see a lot of things. They see happiness and misery, joy and sorrow, hope and despair and still they remain silent.

Some walls see more than others. For instance, the walls of a certain dorm room have seen things that would make a whore blush, and that would cause their residents to die of embarassment if they were to remember it, which is unlikely for several reasons you can probably guess.

The walls of an apartment building two blocks further down have seen entirely different things and so would tell a completely different story, although not necessarily containing completely different elements.

And over the past few years, the walls of a certain flat in central London have watched silently how the lives of two very singular men unfolded. This has been quite the experience, for both men and walls. But where the men can give a detailed account of everything that ever happened to them, which one of them actually does, the walls can’t speak and will never tell.

They won’t tell how, on a late January afternoon their new residents came in for the first time, nor how they left soon after that, came back again, left for a second time though not together and how, when they at last came back very early the next morning, the men who seemed total strangers to each other before now acted like they'd known each other for ages _._

The walls won’t speak about the late night conversation that followed that particular afternoon. They won’t mention the stories the doctor told about a war in a far away land, or the stories the detective told about the puzzles he had solved and the criminals he had caught. They won’t say how the doctor woke late the next morning, calm and rested and surprised when he realised he had not been plagued by nightmares for the first time in months. They also won’t say how the detective on the other hand woke dazed and confused at the dreams he’d had and how he spent the rest of the day glaring at the doctor as if it was somehow his fault.

They won’t say any of these things. Not with words, anyway.

But walls can however tell a story in their own way, for instance about the temper of their residents. In this particular flat, various dents, holes, cracks, burns and hastily redecorated patches bear silent witness to countless outbursts of anger, frustration, boredom and curiosity. Though most of these are the detective’s doing, the doctor is far from innocent. This is illustrated by a massive dent in his bedroom wall where a bronze bust of Napoleon once hit it, thrown in an outburst of rage which was in turn the result of a phone call from his sister.

The walls know exactly what else presses the good doctor's buttons until he snaps, but they can only tell about what happens afterwards. There are other dents and broken objects in that room, different in shape and size but not in cause. It's only in that one bedroom, though. The damage in the rest of the flat is all caused by the other one.

Over the course of these two men's lives, the walls have seen the most peculiar things (except for those years when first, the detective went away, and then the doctor turned all grey-faced and quiet and eventually moved out too. They came back though, so it doesn't really matter to the walls). They've seen a lot of people come and go, and, curiously, a lot of animals too. Sometimes animals that weren't exactly meant to be indoors. There are still claw marks on the floor in one corner, which the residents always keep covered up to spare the landlady.

They've seen sadness. Depression. Joy. Elation. Anger. Fury.

You could say, the walls have seen it all.

And maybe they have.

But they won't say a word. And maybe that's for the best.


End file.
